For years, since the onset of the euro crisis, we have heard that the crisis is over. Every year, politicians keep on telling us that the worst is over, but that next year will be so much better. Do you really think so? Here are some hard facts & figures instead of wishful thinking of lying politicians showing that the euro crisis is not over. On the contrary, things are getting worse.

Italy

La Dolce Vita, the good life, is no longer achievable for millions of Italians. Italy is the third largest Eurozone country and is in dire straits. Public debt has ballooned to well over 130 percent! Is this money ever going to be repaid? Who is going to do that? The country has one of the fastest aging populations in the world. Italian women, when having any children at all, prefer to have just one child. In order for a society to maintain a healthy demographic balance, they should have at least two. Nonetheless, unemployment, from a European perspective, is relatively low at 12 percent. But wait, youth unemployment is virtually at 40 percent. So there are no jobs in Italy, public debt is out of control and its aging population lays a heavy burden on both income taxes and Social Security payments.

Spain

Spain is one of the Eurozone’s largest countries. It is not in a recession, but in a downright depression. Do you need some figures? Unemployment stands at 26.3 percent?. That means more than one out of every four workers is idling and receiving benefits from government and waiting for better days. Even worse, youth unemployment is a staggering 57 percent. Indeed, more than one out of every two youngsters is out of work or is not expected to find one soon. Do you need more proof? Spanish government is spending billions on Social Security, money it simply does not have. Public debt has gone from a fairly modest 30 percent in 2007 to well over 90 percent this year and will soon move to 100 percent and beyond.

Portugal

Portugal is one of the smaller Eurozone countries in the Mediterranean Sea with an economy that is in shambles. The country had to be bailed out by the rest of the Eurozone to the tune of €78 billion. Public debt is around 128 percent, hardly lower than Italy’s. Unemployment hovers around 16.5 percent, which is unsustainable in the medium term. Youth unemployment stands at a depressing h 42 percent.

Although it seems that Portugal has lived up to its promises as part of the bail-out programme, the country will need a second bail-out coming 2014. Of course, it will be paid by other Eurozone members having a healthier economy.

Europe in Shambles

Politicians babble about the worst of the crisis being behind us, or even ‘fixed.’ That is just cheap talk. The hard facts & figures prove them wrong. Europe is on the verge of a genuine collapse. On the one hand, this is because the Euro simply does not work, but makes things worse instead. On the other hand, Eurozone member states are simply unable to devaluate their currencies as they are part of the single currency bloc. As long as this flawed monetary currency, or rather political currency, is kept afloat, less well-off countries within the Eurozone will continue to suffer.

The ECB, the European equivalent of the Fed, will do ‘whatever it takes’ to keep the single currency alive. For now, markets have accepted this, but in the near term they will call their bluff. When, not if, that happens, the euro will be gone and with it billions worth of paper assets, wreaking havoc on an already damaged economy.

Does the graph below suggest the crisis has been solved?

Courtesy: Zerohedge… of course

Europe has run OUT OF MONEY

The Eurozone has close to 20 million unemployed. These are millions of people requiring need food, housing and medical care. This is simply unaffordable in the medium term. Youth unemployment is a ticking time bomb. It will not take long before young people will take to the streets, demanding jobs and a comfortable future.

Has the crisis been solved? Will the Eurozone recover any time soon? We would not bet on it. Europe is an ageing, moribund continent and the sh*t will hit the fan sooner rather than later. Europe has simply run out of money due to its overgenerous entitlements. What will it take for people to start noticing?

Lemag : The Mariano Rajoy Government gave green light to U.S. Forces to position a Task Force in Spain, in view of near general Chaos in Algeria.

Spanish military base Morón de la Frontera. 500 Special Forces of the U.S. Marine Corps from the US Navy as well as 8 US military aircrafts will be positioned at the Móron de la Frontera Spanish military base located near Sevilla in the Andalusian province.

This US Task Force will be allowed for military intervention in Algeria, where the signs of a near Chaos are in place, especially in the southern areas, in view of the next presidential elections in which president Abdelaziz Bouteflika is seeking a fourth mandate.

As per London “Al Quds Arabi” newspaper which revealed the information, the Spanish government decision to authorize the US move of military forces in Spain was taken unusually suddainly.

Actually it took only a few days for Mariano Rajoy to give his OK to Washington to arrange their military move, which is a sign of the emergency of the situation. Algeria is in great danger, regime could collapse any moment.

The same source indicated that the priority of the 500 Marines will be to enforce the safety of the American citizens and of the US Embassy personnel and to cover their repatriation from the country.

In december 2012 during a conference given at the ElCano Royal Institute of Madrid, Bruce Riedel, a recognized expert on terrorism and Middle East policy declared : “Algeria is suffering from a police state. Its civil Society is kept under lock, and you can expect no improvement from the regime in place.

“The very similar social conditions that leaded to a popular revolution in Egypt are now in place in Algeria, a constant demographic pressure, despaired youths with no future, and lack of democracy.”

Bruce Riedel warned that “buying social peace of the people with billions of US dollars will have no effect in a near future.”

He concluded that the process has started and that the general popular uprising will come soon.

Forget, for a moment, the Greek tragedy. The tale of social woe set to play out in Spain this year is both bigger and more important to the world. For the drama of rescuing the euro, or letting it sink, will be played out on Spanish soil.

In the LiraSPG Scenario “When The Euro Breaks”, I discussed what would happen to the euro and the eurozone when those countries—unable to continue under their massive debt burdens—began exiting the European monetary union.

One of the assumptions I made was that one of the smaller nations of the eurozone would leave the monetary union first, thereby encouraging one of the bigger nations to follow their example and leave as well. I postulated that the small country would likely be Greece, and that the large country would probably be Spain.

From this exodus, I analyzed what would happen to the euro vis-à-vis gold and the rest of the world’s currencies—namely, that the euro would suffer a staggered loss of value against commodities and other currencies: An initial drop-and-recovery when the smaller nation exited the eurozone, followed by a sustained drop when the big nation exited the monetary union.

The Scenario was written and published on the LiraSPG site in May 2011.

Since then, I have changed my mind: I no longer think that a small country will exit the eurozone first, followed by one of the bigger countries.

I now think that Spain will exit the eurozone first—precipitously and without warning—and that the impact on the euro will be much more sudden and dramatic than I had earlier thought.

In this SPG Supplement, I will explain my thinking. First I will discuss the general European situation; then the Greek debacle, and how the European leadership has lost sight of what salvaging Greece was supposed to be about; then the current Spanish situation, how it is unsustainable, and how the new Rajoy government’s only escape—politically and economically—is to default and then exit the eurozone.

Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est La Même Chose

There has nominally been major changes in the European political situation since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008—which in fact have proven to be minor: To wit, the Italian, Spanish, Irish, Portuguese and Greek governments have been replaced by the opposition, and the French government of Nicolas Sarkozy looks like it will fall in this coming May’s elections. Of the replacement governments, the Italian, Greek and Portuguese are dominated by “technocrats”—that is, austerity hawks that will genuflect to Brussels’ and Frankfurt’s desire for the debtor countries to pay every last pfennig back to the bond holders.

Excuse me, did I say “pfennig”? I meant “euro cent”.

I can prove quite easily that the political “change” has been totally cosmetic because the economic prescriptions remain the same: On the one hand, austerity for the smaller countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland), coupled with surreptitious bank bailouts by the European Central Bank (ECB) via Long Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO).

Keep on doing’ the same thing, you’re gonna get the same results: Since May 2011, Europe-wide unemployment has increased, to 10.8% across the eurozone; sovereign debt levels have increased both nominally, to €14.8 trillion ($18.35 trillion), and as a percentage of gross domestic product, to 113% of GDP; growth has slowed to a crawl in the big economies of the zone, with France projected to grow 0.7% in 2012 and Germany projected to grow 0.8%; while the economies of the smaller countries have been and will continue to shrink, with Italy projected to be flat in 2012 and Spain to shrink by 1.5% to 2.5%.

Why Greece Used To Matter

Everyone has been paying attention to Greece for so long—and all the European bureacrats have been trying to save Greece from sovereign insolvency for so long—that everyone has forgotten why Greece mattered.

But as I said in the Scenario, saving Greece does not matter in and of itself: After all, it’s tiny—less than 2% of the total GDP of the eurozone.

Saving Greece mattered—past tense—as a sign to the rest of the eurozone and to the financial markets that the European bureacrats—namely the ECB, the European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—were willing and able to guarantee the sovereign debt of all the members of the Eurozone.

The European monetary union never explicitly stated that all the eurozone nations would back up the sovereign debt of any of the member nations. This collective guarantee was tacitly assumed—but never explicitly agreed upon.

When Greece got into trouble with its sovereign debt, the idea was to salvage it not because Greece was a large piece of the eurozone, but as a sign that the eurocrats would honor the tacit promise.

In other words, saving Greece was never an end in itself—it was just a symbol.

Saving Greece was also supposed to scare away the bond vigilantes and anyone else who might think that the sovereign debt of any of the eurozone members was vulnerable to financial rape and pillage.

We saw how that all worked out: The failure of the ECB-EC-IMF Troika to “fix” Greece between 2010 and 2012 wasn’t just a political embarrassment. It undermined the markets’ belief that the eurocrats knew what they’re doing. They quite obviously don’t.

It doesn’t matter that—finally, at the last second—the Troika sort-of saved Greece: The impression remains that they’re the Gang That Can’t Salvage Straight. And the impression is accurate: If they did know what they were doing, they would have solved Greece back in May of 2010—completely and definitively—and we wouldn’t still be talking about Greece.

But we are. Which means that now, we’re also talking about other, bigger countries—
__like Spain.

Spain’s in Trouble

Spain’s GDP in 2011 was €1.05 trillion (US$1.33 trillion). In 2012, as previously mentioned, the general consensus is that it will shrink by between 1.5% and perhaps as much as 2.5%; a figure of –1.75% seems reasonable.

Protests in Spain.

Unemployment in Spain is 24%. Youth unemployment (under 24 years old) is a shocking 53%. Both figures will rise during 2012 as the economy continues to contract. An unemployment of 30% by year’s end is within the realm of the possible. Hell, within the realm of the likely, even.

Total government debt is projected to be 79.8% of GDP in 2012—that is, €800 billion. Much more troublingly, the debt last year was “only” €680 billion—but that was still 21% higher than in 2010. So at this rate—assuming the status quo remains unchanged, and without factoring in the contraction of GDP—in 2013 the projected Spanish government debt could well rise to 90% of GDP.

(Throughout this Supplement, when discussing “government debt”, I am referring both to Madrid’s and to the autonomous regions’ consolidated debt situation.)

Private debt is an additional 75% of GDP—and let’s not even start talking about the delinquency rates—while the banks have a capital shortfall estimated at a mere €78 billion.

On top of all this—as if “all this” weren’t bad enough—is the issue of the outstanding Spanish debt—

—the nub of the problem.

Spain has redemptions totalling €149 billion in 2012. It will issue a total of €186, with an eye to extend the maturity of the outstanding debt. But even with these concerted efforts, in 2012, the maturity of Spanish debt will in fact shrink from 6.4 years to 6.2 years. Add to that, in 2011, interest payments totaled €28.8 billion—up from €22.1 billion the year before. Why? Because of rising bond yields: Spain is considered riskier—due to the Troika’s inability to finally “fix” Greece and Spain’s own obvious domestic financial issues—and thus Spain has to pay more to borrow money.

In other words, Spain has fallen into the classic “borrowed-short-but-my-income-is-long-and-on-top-of-that-my-loans-are-getting-more-expensive” trap.

Last week, April 4, Spain’s Treasury held a bond auction—and fuck-all was it nasty: Of the expected €2.5 to €3.6 billion, Spain barely managed to get bids for €2.6 billion—and the yield on the 10-year spiked to 5.85%, before settling at a still-way-high 5.75%.

Worldwide markets all got down on this auction—

—but here’s the thing: Spain has a lot more of these auctions coming up—on average one every two weeks.

After World War II, the UK and the US decided to create “stay-behind” paramilitary organizations, with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited: i.e., mainly hardline anticommunists, including many ex-Nazis or former fascists, whether in Italy or in other European countries. In Germany, for example, Gladio had as a central focus the Gehlen Org — also involved in ODESSA “ratlines” — named after Reinhard Gehlen who would become West Germany’s first head of intelligence, while the predominantly Italian P2 Masonic lodge was composed of many members of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), including Licio Gelli. Its clandestine “cells” were to stay behind (hence the name) in enemy controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations.

CIA director Allen Dulles was one of the key people in instituting Operation Gladio, and most of Gladio’s operations were financed by the CIA.The anti-communist networks, which were present in all of Europe, including in neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland, were partly funded by the CIA.

However, Italian Gladio was more far reaching. “A briefing minute of June 1, 1959, reveals Gladio was built around ‘internal subversion’. It was to play ‘a determining role… not only on the general policy level of warfare, but also in the politics of emergency’. In the 1970s, with communist electoral support growing and other leftists looking menacing, the establishment turned to the ‘Strategy of Tension’ … with Gladio eager to be involved.”Create FalseFlag Attacks blamed on the Leftist organization who also were infiltrated. Create a Situation of Tension and Terror by random assassinations and bombs campaign so that the General Public will be eager to accept a more repressive State and State of Emergency in case of need. These were the main objectives of Gladio. This operation was enforced from 1948 until 1989.

We encourage everybody to watch this excellent 02h20 documentary shot by the BBC and aired in 1992 about OPERATION GLADIO. It gives a fresh perspective on the recent war on Terror initiated by the Western Governments following the New York-Washington 9/11 attacks, the London 07/07 and the Madrid 03/11 bombings.

In Spain three weeks ago in a town called Alzira population (maybe about 50,000 people) 30 kilometres south of Malaga a big shot politician flew in by helicopter. The landing zone was in the local police station which was based close the centre of the town .The politician was coming to the town to sort out the compensation claims and worries of the peoples where a nearby local forest and bush fire had damaged property .These forest and bush fires are a common event in the dry October end of summer tinderbox Spanish country side.

The difference this time was that the local police force used some high tech device from the police station that caused most all electronic items within 500 meters of the police station to be knocked out for about one hour. The Police told the locals it was a safety wave .This safety wave
effect lasted for about one hour in the early morning times while the Helicopter flew in and about one hour later flew out. The effects were no mobile phones in that 500 meter radius of the police station would work. No cars within that field effect could be made to start their engines. All other cars outside the region were not allowed to enter this safety wave region so it’s not known if they
can knock out engines that were running at the time of the safety wave event.

All satellite TV and cable TV devices in the safety wave region were knocked out also. We are talking a region festooned with multi story apartment blocks with hundreds if not thousands of normal Spanish going about their normal lives unaware that there was some sort of test of a safety wave device about to be given to them.